Origin

The Old English word smoke is around a thousand years old, and people are first recorded as smoking tobacco at the start of the 17th century. A big city has been called the Smoke or the Big Smoke since the 1840s—the first examples refer not to London but to Australian towns. A piece of indisputable and incriminating evidence can be described as a smoking gun. This conjures up the image of someone standing holding a smoking gun next to a corpse with gunshot wounds. The natural assumption is that they are the guilty party. The phrase came to prominence during the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. An incriminating tape revealed President Nixon's wish to limit the FBI's involvement in the investigation, prompting Republican congressman Barber T. Conable to observe: ‘I guess we have found the smoking pistol, haven't we?’ There's no smoke without fire, suggests that there is always some reason for a rumour. The English version dates back at least to the 15th century, though the same idea appears in the work of the Roman comic dramatist Plautus—‘the flame is right next to the smoke’—and in a 13th-century French proverb. The phrase smoke and mirrors refers to the illusion created by conjuring tricks and can be traced back to the US political columnist Jimmy Breslin, writing in 1975: ‘All political power is primarily an illusion…Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors…If somebody tells you how to look, there can be seen in the smoke great, magnificent shapes, castles and kingdoms, and maybe they can be yours.’

where there's smoke there's fire

But, he put on the agenda several things that I don't think anyone outside of a little Labor circle had ever heard of, and he put them out there on the agenda, and I think some people will say where there's smoke there's fire.

It certainly isn't true, but there are people who believe there's no smoke without fire.

There is no smoke without fire and I would not be surprised if something happens in the next six months.

smoke like a chimney

Minttu smokes like a chimney… so I smoked too (like I needed an excuse).

MICHAEL DELVECCHIO tells PageSix.com, ‘She was drinking and smoking like a chimney, so we asked the security guard to tell her to put out her cigarette because there were young children present, but she just kept on doing it..’

Black says, quote, ‘I went on a kind of crazy rampage, me and another member of the cast, who will remain nameless, just running around, dancing around, and drinking, and exercising, and smoking like a chimney.’

Derivatives

smokable

In the tough, internal logic of the closed institution, there are also practical reasons to turn to the hard stuff: smokeable drugs are more difficult to consume in secret than injectable ones.

If the black market choose to supply an addictive substance like heroin or this smokable methamphetamine, you normally see a big chain reaction of crime following it as addicts struggle to support their habits.

Injection drug use and smokeable cocaine in particular are related to HIV transmission among Latinas, both through shared injection equipment and through sex-for-drugs-or-money exchanges.